Announced last night at the L.A. Auto Show, Ducati and AMG (Mercedes-Benz’s tuning house) have formed a partnership between the two brands the will first manifest itself by having the German car tuner sponsoring the Italian company’s MotoGP team. Rumored for over a month now, this announcement finally puts to bed the speculation that Fiat would sponsor Ducati now that Valentino Rossi has joined the Rosso Corse team, and is also the first official sponsorship announcement for Ducati Corse’s 2011 season.

With Rossi healing his wounds back in Italy, Nicky Hayden was on hand for the event with a Ducati Diavel and Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG on stage with him. Asked what he thought about the partnership, Hayden replied, “Well, if this is my company bike and this is my company car, I’d say I’m doing pretty well.” We’d tend to agree.

Beyond AMG’s involvement in MotoGP, It’s not clear where the partnership will take the two brands, but we can assume a similar deal will materialize with Ducati sponsoring some of AMG’s racing efforts. “In AMG we have found a partner who perfectly reflects our brand values of high performance, motorsport, excitement and our sense of unmistakable style and design,” said Ducati CEO Gabriele del Torchio.

,,looks like no more Rossi / Ferrari fun rides. This German / Italian partnership makes little sense,, which is why it’s sooo great. Is it to put the Teutonic in Ducati or to put the (absent) passion in Mercedes? At the very least, race fans of two wheels and four wheels might start watching the “each others” series”,, again.

mrbubbles

I see an AMG tuned edition of the Diavel coming!

http://steveno.wordpress.com Steven Oliver

@Faster1 Did the Fiat (Italian)/Yamaha (Japanese) partnership make any sense?

joe

Rossi, Fiat made sense.

gnmac

Mrbubbles, don’t be poppin’ your bottles of bubbly too soon…it will be a cold day in hell before AMG pimps a Diavel, besides I wouldn’t expect them to stoop so low as to modding such a fugly mutant as that Diavel. Anyway, as for AMG sponsorship…Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh, what? Really? I know AMG V12’s transformed the Pagani Zonda into the best supercar in the world, quite possibly one of the best of all time, but other than that what does a German muscle car brand have to do with exotic Italian racing machinery? Maybe they’re harking back to when WWII when the Italian Macchi and Fiat fighter planes were powered by Alfa-built Daimler engines???

Doctor Jelly

Maybe they were just jealous about the S 1000 RR and want to get their name in GP before BMW can… Just to stick it to Beemer.

uhuk uhuk

so it will be AMG Ducati Racing Team????..sound much much better than Marlboro Ducati…maybe also because Rossi doesn’t want sponssoring from any tobacco company…then Ducati should get new sponsorship…i wonder why they didn’t make a deal with oil based company like Shell or Petronas..

http://www.asphaltandrubber.com Jensen Beeler

I haven’t seen anything that suggests AMG will be a title sponsor, and judging from how much money Marlboro has been shelling out, I highly doubt anyone will replace them as Ducati’s main sponsor.

AMG’s partnership (note the use of that word), has more to do with the fact that the people that buy AMG’s and Ducati’s are of a similar demographic. The two companies are basically trying to appeal to each other’s core customers.

ting tong

what about Marlboro???does Ducati kick off Marlboro from main sponsosrship of the team for next year???i dont hear any news about it either from Ducati or Marlboro…

if really AMG sponsoring Ducati team, not Marlboro, it is very good news for world of sport ..i hate Marlboro and tobacco…get loss!!!!

ovd

I think this proves one thing: BMW comes to MotoGP…

rrse

ugly car ugly bike, looks like Italians have been eating German sausage, first time since 1939?